


Counting

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Series: Eight Nights [7]
Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jewish Holidays, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There is a matter of choice and God, and God will win every time. If David leaves his post, the entire kingdom will suffer, but that is not why David will not leave. It is responsibility. As the Books had been given, so David is given, to service, to his marriage, to this ceaseless task of ruling.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“You are not the first-ripened harvest,” his mother says, when he speaks that way. “You are not an offering to God.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting

David counts.

He counts days as they pass and weeks as they fall, and months, he counts those on his fingers and by the passing of the moon, until he’s counting years. Each one is a song, a devotional, and every year on Counting he presents on, complete, to Nathan, who presides over the largest congregation in the country with the absentminded devotion only she is capable of. His mother brings the first-ripened harvest with a stern look on her face, and every year it is the same question: _when are you coming home?_

And this year, it’s the same answer. “When I find someone who can take my place.”

He picks at the fruit she brings though, and they both know that there is no _coming home_ anymore. There is a matter of choice and God, and God will win every time. If David leaves his post, the entire kingdom will suffer, but that is not why David will not leave. It is responsibility. As the Books had been given, so David is given, to service, to his marriage, to this ceaseless task of ruling.

“You are not the first-ripened harvest,” his mother says, when he speaks that way. “You are not an offering to God.”

David counts this conversation. They have had it as many times as he has ticked them off in his head. It’s the celebration for it, really. “I’ve been that for my entire life. Chosen. You can’t say no to God. Are we really doing this today?”

He says this and he thinks it’s funny, because his mother is precisely the kind of person - maybe the only person - who would and could say not to God, to walk away and go back to her farm and her life and _enjoy it_ , and God would meekly accept it. “You’re not doing this for God,” she tells him, and _that’s_ new. “You’re doing this to calm your guilt. Over that boy.”

Ice prickles down his back. No one talks to him about this. Ethan, who was there, is the only person who can even begin to start. But no one else has the guts, or the temperament, and he thought his mother was included in that number. But she does not back down when he feels that all he can do is stare at her. Finally, he manages, his voice rough, “Did you really have to do this today? I don’t think you have the right to speak to me on that.”

The only response she gives him is disappointment. 

The song he hands to Nathan, this day, is more anger than joy. Nathan takes it, and gives him nothing but silence in return, which is fitting, since silence is all he truly wants. There’s a party later tonight at the palace, for him. He finds it no longer suits him.

 

~~~~~

So many of the holidays are about feasts, David thinks, his hands sticky with honey and white soft cheese, as he makes off with an entire plate of it when no one is looking, and sits in a corner of the barn to finish it off, but this one is the best because it’s his birthday, too. He did this last year, too, with a pie, and got sick, but cheese and honey is better for so many reasons. The first is that it doesn’t land so heavily in his stomach, and the second is that he doesn’t like it as much as pie, so he probably won’t eat a serving designed for ten.

But he’s eaten a lot of it when he hears something overturn in the barn, and when he rounds a corner to investigate, he sees something - probably a cat, David thinks - has overturned a bushel of hay, and the sunshine streaming down from the window is bright against the floor, turning the straw into a burnished gold color. 

In the middle of that shaft of light is a book; it’s bound in leather and it looks expensive. David opens it, but it’s empty, with no indication of who it belongs to. He looks around and wipes his hands on his shirt, white cheese and yellow honey smearing down the sides of it, and he picks it up. “Hello?” he asks, turning a full circle, but there is no reply save the meow of a cat.

He takes it and holds it, and it feels right, and as no one comes to claim it he adds it to his pile of gifts. No one seems to come forth for it. That night he writes musical notation in it. It’s his first song.

~~~~~

“Your birthday is Counting,” Jack says, his eyebrows raised. “You’ll have to excuse my lack of gifts.”

David shrugs and he tries to smile, but it comes out self-conscious. “Mom said that I interrupted my father’s trip with his offerings, and that she blames that for everything.”

“I think it makes you some kind of Counting offering yourself,” Jack drawls, and David can’t help it, he presses kisses into Jack’s shoulder, and knows Jack favors the affection because he does not push David away. “A first-ripened harvest.”

“When we take Shiloh,” David starts.

“When you take Shiloh,” Jack corrects.

“When _we_ take Shiloh,” David continues, “then I will make you throw me a lavish party every year. It will outstrip the celebration for everything else.”

Jack turns, assessing that. “You want _me_ to throw you a party,” he says mildly.

“I’ve heard yours are the best ones,” David says, feigning innocence, and Jack pushes him then, and David laughs until Jack’s mouth is on his neck, his chest, and lower, _lower_. 

“This is the best gift,” David says, after, and Jack gives him a look, fond and irritated, like he thinks that David is ridiculous, but is perfectly contented with that side of him.

This is the first and last birthday that they have together.

~~~~~

David counts them.

21 spent at home. 2 spent at war. Three spent with Nathan, alone. One spent in a muddy field, watching Jack continue to challenge God to let him die. One spent with Jack, curled up together, where no one finds them for an entire day, a gift.

The rest do not matter.

~~~~~

It is the king’s birthday, and there is a party fit to tear down the scaffolding of Gilboan upper class society, and the king is _drunk_ \- drunk enough to make a fool of himself, drunk enough that Michelle tosses him into an antechamber (tosses, pushes, bullies, insists, demands, cajoles, begs) and tells him to sober up before he goes to dance again. 

He sits in the antechamber and stews, and fights with himself, and yells at God some, before the door opens and where he thinks perhaps Michelle has come to fight him, the only person there is Micah, his grey eyes round. “You shouldn’t say those things about God.”

“I didn’t think you were listening,” David replies suddenly, embarrassed. “Where’s your sister?”

Micah waves his hand back to the room, as if to indicate _somewhere_ , and comes in closer. “Is this about my papa?”

_Is this about my papa_ is Micah’s great weapon, David thinks, it is what Micah can hold against David’s heart whenever David refuses to see him or his twin, buds from the same vine. Lucinda does not bring them often; almost never. She says that it is because Micah cannot walk, and because Leah refuses to go without her brother, but everyone knows what the truth is.

“Do you ever cease with that call, little bird?” David says, half-joking, half-exhausted, and finally settles, under the Caravaggio painting depicting the holiday, and buries his face in his hands. Micah looks like his father, exactly, down to the shape of his eyes, but lacks the arrogant bearing.

“Why? It always calms you down,” Micah retorts. The arrogant bearing is lacking, but the blade on the side of his tongue is just as keen. “Aunt Michelle asked me to.”

“Which story would you have ripped out of my heart today?” David says, the bitterness of the words sitting heavily on his tongue. “I think I am starting to run out, my heart is getting old, and empty.”

“Your heart has been empty for years, Uncle,” Micah says, and he wheels himself closer, and David does not like the truth of it. 

It is the king’s birthday, and he lets his nephew comfort him with a hand on his knee and words sharper than stones, each one counted.

**Author's Note:**

> SOME NOTES:
> 
> A: Shavuot, which this holiday is based on, is the Festival of Weeks and doesn't translate to _Counting_ but considering the importance of numbers in the holiday and that Weeks is not a good and pithy name, I took some liberties. (It's the holiday, for those who are curious, where the Jewish people believe that the Bible was handed to us via Moses. It is also King David's birthday.)
> 
> B: Jonathan's son is canonically named Mephiboshet, which is both a mouthful and incredibly out-of-fashion, by like a couple of thousand years, probably. So again. Liberties. He also did not have a sister but this show features so many twins in this line I had to do it.
> 
> C: Seriously, if you're reading this thank you so much for your continued reading, and if you're subscribed to me and sick of all these fics, I promise, tomorrow's is the last one in the series!


End file.
